


For Him

by Civilized_muppets



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Demon Shane Madej, I don’t know but it’s gonna be sad, I haven’t decided yet, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Memory Lane, Road Trips, Unrequited Love, Well - Freeform, all he knows is whatever this is it’s fucken strong, bittersweet might be a better word, ryan becomes a ghost, shane and the goatman are bros, shane has to look for his dumbass, shane is a demon who doesn’t know what love is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 21:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15957896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Civilized_muppets/pseuds/Civilized_muppets
Summary: Ryan Bergara died on a Sunday.“Ghosts generally didn’t have a good time. They wallow in sadness or rage or terror or confusion, trapped in an endless cycle of pain and misery with no end in sight.Of course, most ghosts don’t have a demon best friend.It wouldn’t be easy, but for Ryan, Shane would do anything.”





	1. Ryan

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to SelfAwareShipper for listening to my bullshit while I worked this out

Ryan Bergara died on a Sunday.

 

When he didn’t show up at the office on Monday, no one was worried. Shane had been there on Friday for their movie night, and he told their coworkers that Ryan had complained of headaches and exhaustion. They all assumed that he was sick, and went on about their day as usual. Editing videos, being asked to comment on how Keith looked in his ridiculously high heels for an episode of the try guys, having lunch with coworkers, editing more videos. Everyone had texted Ryan their “get well soon”s, and didn’t think much more about it.

 

It was only after the workday ended that Shane began to worry. 

 

Ryan hadn’t responded to his texts; according to his phone they hadn’t even been seen. Shane tried to shake it off, but the worry lingered. It only increased with every “how are you” and “are you okay???” And “dude you’re scaring me” that went unseen. 

 

And Shane knew it was midnight, but he was worried dammit, and suddenly he was knocking on Ryan’s door.

 

After three rounds of loud knocks are ignored and a neighbor protests with a loud “shut the fuck up”, he decides a little bit of demon magic won’t hurt anyone except-

 

The doors already unlocked.

 

Now normally, he would shrug it off as just forgetfulness, but this was Ryan.

 

Ryan’s a paranoid bastard; all those unsolved crime stories getting to him. He never leaves the door unlocked. Ever.

 

Shane walks in the apartment, slowly and silently. The first thing he notices is the missing tv and the knocked over coffee table, and if he had blood it would’ve gone cold. 

 

Ryan is in the kitchen, laying on the tile, blank eyes unseeing. His hand is reaching for his fallen phone less than a foot away. His nose is broken, and it looks like a few of his ribs are too. His ankle is clearly twisted, his left wrist sprained. There’s a bloody baseball bat lying a few feet away.

 

Shane’s seen enough corpses in his day to know that Ryan’s been dead a while. The blood is dried, his skin has paled, rigor mortis has set in. 

 

He starts to put together a narrative in his head. Ryan, while believing in god, is not particularly religious and doesn’t go to church often. But by the crosses on the doors in the hallway, his immediate neighbors are. A burglar picks the lock during church time, finds Ryan in the living room, probably actually sick enough to be unable to fight back as strongly or scream as loudly as he would’ve needed to. He’s chased into the kitchen where he’s beaten nearly to death with a baseball bat, which is soon abandoned on the kitchen floor. The thief is gone before the neighbors come back, and closes the door again so no one notices the break in. Ryan’s last moments are spent desperately reaching for his phone, hoping to call for help.

 

Except help doesn’t come.

 

Not until early Tuesday morning.

 

Shane calls the police.

 

He watches as Ryan’s body is carried out in a body bag, answers the officers questions, and he doesn’t really feel a thing the whole time. It shouldn’t be surprising, he’s a demon after all, but something about this apathy seems… off. 

 

It’s only when he gets home that anger consumes him. His aura lashes out around him, tearing up the couch, smashing the tv, setting papers on fire and he’s pretty sure one of those was his bill.

 

_ He had failed _ . 

 

Shane had protected Ryan against every ghost, every demon, every witch and monster that had posed a threat to him. He had stood between his oblivious friend and danger more times than he could count.

 

He could protect him from demons, but he couldn’t protect him from a  _ man. _

 

And that’s when Shane dropped to his knees laughing hysterically at the irony. Humans feared demons because they’re dangerous, because they’re evil, but the truth was that they couldn’t hold a candle to humanity.

 

_ “Why do demons scare you so much?” _

 

_ Ryan had looked at him with a baffled look on his face, Brown eyes incredulous. _

 

_ “W- they’re demons dude! The height of evil! What is there to fear if not demons?” _

 

_ “You mean other than strangers injecting me with heroin on the sidewalk?” _

 

_ Ryan scoffed at him and rolled his eyes, but he was a bit less tense now, so Shane had called it a success. _

 

_ “Yeah, big guy, other than things that will never happen ever.” _

 

_ “Humans.” _

 

_ Ryan turned to face him and tilted his head. _

 

_ “Humans?” _

 

_ “Demons could never come up with half the things that people have. Hell’s empty, Ryan. All the devils are here.” _

 

The next day at work he stood at the front of the office and announced Ryan’s death. Everyone in the room cried, even Shane. They all gathered in the break room and broke out the alcohol as if they weren’t at fucking work and drank to his memory. 

 

They put together a video announcing his death to the fans, and consequently the end of unsolved. That show had been Ryan’s pride and joy, Shane would never do it without him. Shane himself put together a compilation of Ryan’s best moments at the end, including some footage from his own phone of them at movie night or at the bar, ending with the most recent footage from Friday night. Likely the last time Ryan Bergara has been seen alive.

 

_ “ACHOO!” _

 

_ “Dude, are you sick?” _

 

_ Ryan glared at him over his tissue and rasped out a denial. _

 

_ “Sure you’re not. Do you want anything?” _

 

_ “I want you to bring the fucking popcorn here so we can start the movie.” _

 

_ “All right little guy, let me know if you need anything else.” _

 

The fans practically screamed their grief. Ryan’s name trended on every social media platform for days, condolences coming from every corner of the globe. When Ryan was buried they placed mounds of flowers at his gravestone.

 

After the grief came the rage. They demanded justice, demanded his killer be caught. Redditors used what they had to try and solve his murder, theories ran rampant around social media. (Even Shane himself was a suspect in a few, and while normally the demon would be proud that he had been suspected of such brutality, with Ryan as the victim he only felt… hollow. Had it been any other human he very well might have done it, but Ryan… he could never have hurt Ryan.)

 

But eventually the case went cold, and Ryan became one of the unsolved cases he loved to read about.

 

When the police called an end to the investigation, Shane hit the books in hell. Every sin committed by man was written down in their tomes. Finding the killer was easy. The humans had their chance to provide Ryan justice, now it was Shane’s turn.

 

_ “Was it you?” _

 

_ He turned around on the barstool to see a woman so drunk off her ass it was a wonder she was still conscious. _

 

_ “Pardon?” _

 

_ “Shane Madej, right? The guy from Unsolved?” _

 

_ Shane felt a pang of agony somewhere when he heard the name of Ryan’s magnum opus. He’s heard humans describe it as the heart, but that couldn’t be right. He didn’t have one. _

 

_ “Yes.” _

 

_ “I’m sorry about Ryan.” _

 

_ What was it with humans and saying sorry for things that weren’t their fault? This girl had nothing to do with Ryan’s murder, why should she feel sorry for it? _

 

_ “Thank you.” _

 

_ “His murderer turned up dead a while back, killed the same way Ryan was.” _

 

_ Ah, alcohol. He would always marvel at its ability to make humans completely abandon the niceties and propriety they held so dear. _

 

_ “I heard.” _

 

_ “They’re calling whoever did it some kind of punisher, getting the guy when the police failed.” _

 

_ “Is that so?” _

 

_ “Some say- well, there was always that theory running around that you were a demon.” _

 

_ “So I’ve been told.” _

 

_ “So- was it you? Did you kill Ryan’s murderer?” _

 

_ He thought of the man whose name he had stricken from history screaming down on the racks of hell, being personally seen to by a friend of his who had owed him a favor. _

 

_ “Oh, honey. I did so much worse.” _

 

After that, he tried to move on, tried to get over it. But Ryan’s memory followed him everywhere, at work, at home, in every restaurant they’d ever been at. 

 

Shane quit his job, and moved to San Francisco. He tried to start over. It didn’t help.

 

It hit him one night that Ryan deserved to know the truth. Deserved to know his best friend was a demon, deserved to know that all the things he believed in were real even if the legends were so off it wasn’t funny. 

 

So Shane set off to find Ryan in the afterlife. 

 

He severely doubted that Ryan had ended up in hell, his soul was too bright for a dark place like that. But that was the easiest for Shane to get to so the started there. Purgatory was a little harder, but Shane was fairly high up on the food chain, so it didn’t pose too much of a challenge. 

 

Ryan wasn’t in either. Which left heaven.

 

That meant this was going to be complicated.

 

He knew an angel named Zadkiel. He was the angel of freedom, benevolence, and mercy, so he was more willing to mingle with demons than most. As much as everyone liked to believe in black and white there was nothing that wasn’t cast in shades of gray. God was selfish, the devil had good intentions. Sometimes angels were evil and sometimes demons were good. Zadkiel understood this better than most angels, too caught up on their horse to realize it wasn’t any higher than anyone else’s. 

 

Zadkiel was initially hesitant to allow Shane to see the list, but after staring him in the eye for a few moments, the angel smiled and allowed it. Shane figured he had sensed he had good intentions.

 

There was only one problem. 

 

Ryan wasn’t there either.

 

Which meant he was a ghost.

 

Of course he was.

 

Ghosts generally didn’t have a good time. They wallow in sadness or rage or terror or confusion, trapped in an endless cycle of pain and misery with no end in sight.

 

Of course, most ghosts don’t have a demon best friend.

 

It wouldn’t be easy, but for Ryan, Shane would do anything.

 

Ghosts haunt places they have a strong emotional attachment to, be it the place they died or their childhood home. Ryan wasn’t in his apartment, Shane definitely would have felt him there.

 

So Shane went to Ryan’s childhood home, his school, the train tracks he used to hang out at, the entirety of his hometown, his university. He checked Ryan’s favorite bar and the movie theater they frequented, the place they usually went for lunch, all of Ryan’s favorite spots in the city, and came up empty handed.

 

Ryan didn’t have any major childhood traumas or any major depression anywhere, which left fear.

 

Because of course Ryan Believer Bergara would latch onto fear.

 

And so began a demon's international trip down memory lane to all the places they had ever shot for supernatural.

  
  



	2. Shane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some insight into Shane

The thing about Shane is that he’s not really a super powerful demon.

 

Oh, he’s above average, but physical power isn’t what got him this far.

 

The credit for that goes to his friends.

 

See, you can usually tell who’s gonna be great and who’s gonna be nothing from the racks. Among the screams of tortured souls are clear signs of which one of these poor bastards will be valuable.

 

There are those who scream, cry, break down. They’ll make fine demons when they graduate, but at the end of the day most of them will just be another smokey face in the crowd.

 

And then, you have the interesting ones.

 

Some of them are angry, they scream at their torturers and spit in their faces. Even when they’re almost fully fledged demons they’re still as fiery as they were when the hellhounds dropped them at the wardens feet.

 

Some of them are crazy, laughing maniacally at the screams of their neighbors and telling the torturers to keep going.

 

And some of them are stoic. These are the rare ones, the ones who become a demon without ever letting out a scream. The ones who hold eye contact with whoever’s on the other side of the whip and doesn’t break it until they leave.

 

The interesting ones are the ones who’ll go far, the ones who will climb up the hierarchy like they were born to do  it. 

 

The angry become the wardens, who keep all the other demons in line. The crazy become the torturers, who carve the humanity out of those on the racks. The stoic became the pencil pushers, who make the rules and enforce them.

 

Shane couldn’t remember which type he’d been, it had been so long ago. But while other demons ignored the racks, he paid close attention to pick out the interesting ones, and when they left the rack he made his move.

 

Hey, I’m Shane, you must be new. Let me show you the ropes, help you out a bit. I’ve got connections, I can get you in quick without much grunt work. Oh, it’s no problem, we’re friends right? You’ll just owe me a  _ favor.  _

 

Sure enough his friends quickly rose up the food chain. He made sure to keep in contact with them, help them out when they asked, accumulated favor after favor after favor. 

 

Favors were the most useful currency, especially in Hell. Most demons spent their time on assignments, making deals or wreaking havoc. Some stayed at one place, claimed it as their territory and Hell’s by extension, but a certain power level was needed for that.

 

But thanks to one of Shane’s pencil pusher friends he had conveniently slipped through the cracks, and as long as he didn’t cause enough trouble to attract the attention of anyone higher than his friends he could do whatever the fuck he wanted. 

 

Humans had always fascinated him with their duality. They had the ability to be better than angels or worse than demons at the same time. They were the champions of the gray area of morality. Some had too much empathy, some didn’t have enough. Some souls were dark as the void and others shone brighter than the sun.

 

He had always wanted to see what made them tick. For centuries he had targeted the worst of the worst and the best of the best and tried to change it. He had managed to turn dark souls light and light souls dark, and he never got tired of figuring out how much it took.

 

That’s how he met Ryan.

 

Ryan hadn’t been the brightest soul, but he had certainly been good. He had a strong sense of justice and a healthy fear of the unknown. 

 

He was Shane’s next  _ project. _

 

Shane spent months pushing him, using every tactic of manipulation in the book, but this human, this strange little human didn’t waver a bit. His soul was as bright as it had been the first time Shane saw him and he wanted nothing more than to know  _ why _ .

 

Ryan became an obsession, almost every moment of Shane’s time was spent trying to solve the puzzle. He had always shielded Ryan from anything serious but now he practically  _ drenched  _ Ryan in his aura, so much so that it honestly began to comfort the man, so there was no mistaking who this human belonged to. Some of the ghosts tried to warn Ryan about him but they could never get close enough even when the spirit box came into play. (and  _ holy shit _ did Shane hate that thing. It was exhausting shielding his thoughts from it, and if some words got through sue him, he was fucking hungry)

 

But the more time Shane spent obsessing over Ryan, the more he began to… like him. Ryan was funny, he was adorable, he was easily scared. He had the best smile Shane had ever seen followed by a captivating laugh, and Shane honestly hadn’t known what a wheeze was but he couldn’t get enough of it now.

 

Shane had a lot of friends, but they were friendships made for power, for favors. They were advantageous, and all of them had been made with that in mind. Ryan was… unexpected. There was no advantage to his friendship, no power to be gained from it. It just… was. And it was good. He spent time with his other friends, but it was mostly to maintain connections. The time he spent with Ryan was honestly fun, and always enjoyable.

 

He thinks Ryan might be what humans call a “best friend.”

 

They had movie nights,

 

_ “Cinderella, Shane? Really? _

 

_ “Shut up, it’s a fucking classic!” _

 

Road trips,

 

_ “I’M ON THE HIIIIIIIGHWAY TO HELL!” _

 

_ Shane was drumming to the beat on the dashboard, laughing at the irony that their route was going to pass a literal gate to Hell. _

 

_ “Dude, I’m driving!” _

 

_ Ryan was attempting to look stern but couldn’t quite hold back his laughter. Shane grabbed a water bottle and used it as a microphone, ignoring Ryan’s protest of “That’s my holy water!” _

 

_ “HIIIIIIIIGHWAY TO HELL!” _

 

_ His voice cracked in the middle of the phrase, and Ryan finally broke down laughing. They were both giggling too much to finish the chorus, but when Shane held the water bottle in front of Ryan he didn’t hesitate. _

 

_ “DON’T STOP MEEEEEEE!” _

 

And bar crawls.

 

_ “Shaaaaaaaaane. Shane holy shit.” _

 

_ Shane, stone cold sober due to the fact that alcohol didn’t affect him, turned to his friend with a smirk. _

 

_ “What is it, little guy?” _

 

_ “Look at that guy, no the other one, to the left- other left, there you go.” _

 

_ The man was tall, dressed in a collared shirt with a jacket and jeans. He had short, messy brown hair and brown eyes covered by glasses, and he was laughing at something one of his buddies had said. _

 

_ “What about him?” _

 

_ “He’s- he’s fucken hot, dude. Smooooooookin. I could cook a burger on him. Goddamn. Bringing sexy back. Wooo!” _

 

_ The demon had burst out laughing, practically holding his friend up as he had literally swooned. _

 

_ “Okay, man, I think you’ve had enough. Let’s get you home.”  _

 

_ It wasn’t until much later that Shane realized that the man actually looked a lot like him. It was probably a coincidence, but he couldn’t stop thinking about that little revelation for weeks. _

 

Maybe he was doing this because of his obsession. Maybe he was doing it because Ryan had been a friend.

 

Ryan had been… everything. Usually Shane already had his next project picked out by the time the last was almost done, but Shane hadn’t actually thought about what he would do after Ryan. He knew, on some level, that Ryan would eventually die, from old age if nothing else. But he hadn’t consciously thought about it until Ryan was gone.

 

Maybe he just couldn’t let go.

 

Whatever the reason, there was one thing Shane was certain of.

 

He would find Ryan Bergara. Even if it took decades, even if it took centuries. Even if he had to comb the entire earth to do it. 

 

He would find Ryan if it was the last thing he did.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter: the road trip


End file.
